


so call it what you want

by codenametargeter



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Azure Moon Route, Felix Fraldarius has zero chill, M/M, Post-Timeskip, Pre-Final battle, no beta we die like Glenn, why communicate when you can just ?????
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:14:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24563665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/codenametargeter/pseuds/codenametargeter
Summary: It's come down to this: the final mission briefing before their attack on Enbarr. Felix objects. Dimitri doesn't understand why.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 2
Kudos: 48





	so call it what you want

They’re tired. They're all so tired but if they can get through this final battle against the Empire, they’ll finally have a chance to rest. One way or another. 

As Dimitri stands at the front of the room with Byleth, he tries not to think about what the other way entails even though he knows the chances are good of someone he cares about joining the ghosts who haunt him. But maybe luck will be on their side this time. Relying purely on luck is foolish though which is why he opens his mouth to brief their plan of attack once the Professor nods at him to start. 

“The Professor and I will lead the main charge into the palace. Felix, I want you to lead the-”

“No.”

Dimitri blinks and looks up from the map. “What?”

“I said no, boar,” Felix shoots back, arms folded across his chest. “Did you lose your hearing along with your eye?”

Dimitri doesn’t respond immediately and instead waits a moment before saying as calmly as he can manage, “I did not, no.”

“Then you heard me the first time.” 

This wasn’t something he accounted for but he’s not willing to admit defeat quite yet. He takes a deep breath and tries again. “Felix, I need you to lead the second prong of the attack. With your-”

He doesn’t even let him finish. “Petra can do it. Her sword work is as good as mine.”

Another time, Dimitri might have paused to marvel at how freely Felix offered such high praise but instead, he says, “Then where do you propose to be?” 

“By your side.”

Those three little words feel like a punch to the gut, knocking all the air out of him. Those are words he never thought he’d hear again and ones he’d accepted were a relic of another age. And yet now here they are; freely given. And they hurt more than Dimitri ever imagined they might. 

Everyone’s eyes go back and forth between them as if observing some sort of sporting match. Felix breaks first, likely because Dimitri is still too surprised to respond. His mouth opens as if he wants to make some biting remark but instead he turns sharply on his heel and stomps out of the room without another word. 

Mercedes looks after him and then up to the front of the room again, already halfway out of her seat. “I’ll go talk to him.”

Dimitri holds up a hand, “No, Mercedes, please. Don’t trouble yourself. I believe this may be my duty.” But still, he hesitates. It’s all well and good for Felix to walk out of the mission briefing but he’s supposed to be leading it. 

He glances as Byleth and they nod. “Go after him, Dimitri. Rejoin us when you can.” 

He inclines his head and then walks out of the room as quickly as he can while still calling it a walk, trying to ignore the weight of both Sylvain and Ingrid’s eyes following him. Felix has already vanished around the corner and he has to follow the sound of his rapid footsteps through the hallways and then down the stairs and out of the building. He’s already halfway to the training grounds by the time Dimitri steps foot on the cobblestones and so he breaks into a jog to catch up and grabs his arm to stop him from making it any further. “Felix, wait!”

The reaction is instantaneous. “Get off me,” Felix snarls more than says even as he tries to yank himself free to no avail. 

Dimitri doesn’t let go although he loosens his grasp just enough to ensure he’s not hurting him. “Not until you talk to me about what just occurred.” 

He can feel Felix’s body tense beneath his hand and even through his quilted outer layer. “There’s nothing to talk about.” 

“Felix, please,” he softens his voice and even drops his hand in an attempt to offer a concession. 

For a long moment, Felix stares first at him and then down at where his hand lay and then back at him again. “I liked it better when you didn’t try to deny you are a beast.” Dimitri waits silently, not sure what that answer signifies if it even is one. Finally, Felix sighs. “Not here.”

By some silent agreement, they make their way to the nearby classroom that they once used back when they were the Blue Lions and battles against Edelgard were simply a game taken too seriously. Of course, it was never truly a game. He understands that now. But their time at the Academy feels so far away and foreign that he does not know any other way to conceptualize it. 

Felix very deliberately puts space between them once they’re in the classroom. “What do you want, boar?” 

“To understand.” He must pick his words carefully now or else risk Felix leaving again. “For months, years even, you have wanted nothing to do with me but now you would be at my side for this final battle.” 

“It’s the Fraldarius job, isn’t it?” His voice is tinged with bitterness. “To be at the side of the king, ready to step in at any moment. And,” a note of mockery joins the mix, “I’m the only one left.”

For a moment, Dimitri can see nothing but Glenn and Rodrigue as they die before his eyes, taking blows meant for him. Their ghosts whisper in his ear, urging him to strike Edelgard down for vengeance and to let Felix be his shield so he can make that final blow. _It is the Fraldarius way, dying for your king._ He closes his eye, trying to will them away. When he opens them again, he hopes his voice will hold steady as he says, “I will not allow that. Your family has already given so much. Too much.” 

“You won’t allow it.” The note of mockery is an entire song now. 

“That’s right,” Dimitri says, folding his arms across his chest in what he hopes projects confidence and certainty because he feels nothing if not certainty that he does not want Felix dying for him. 

Somehow, Felix’s glare deepens. “I don’t care that you’re the king. You don’t get to tell me what to do, boar.” 

He can feel a headache starting to build at a pressure point behind his ruined eye. “I don’t understand why you would want to. You don’t even like me.”

Felix snorts. Loudly. Derisively. “I don’t even--of course you don’t remember.”

There are a lot of things Dimitri doesn’t remember. He remembers every death and every scream for justice but other things from the last five years are… blurred. Messy. He reaches back through that tangled web of memories but can’t find anything that stands out enough to make sense of. His silence is apparently enough of an admission though and so Felix makes a sound of disdain. Dimitri takes a deep breath and says, “Then explain it to me. Please, Felix.” 

Felix starts pacing back and forth in front of him, three paces one way and then three paces the other, looking very much like a caged panther. He treads that path three times before speaking. “For months when we first got you back, all you did was stand in the cathedral like a hulking creature incapable of speech or anything human. You were good for one thing: swinging that lance of yours in whatever direction the Professor pointed you and killing anyone in your path. You were finally showing yourself to be the beast I always said you were.” 

This was far more words than Felix had strung together in his presence since they’d first arrived at the monastery but Dimitri didn’t dare even open his mouth and chance interrupting him in case it stopped him. He had to know.

“I kept watch over you every fucking day for the entirety of a month,” Felix says, spitting out the words as if they hurt him. Dimitri’s sharp intake of breath gives him away and Felix’s lips twitch upwards in a mockery of a smile. “Every day for a month before Ingrid made me stop and took over and then after another month went by, Gilbert took over and then your dog.”

Out from the fog comes a hazy memory of each of them in the cathedral with him, just barely in sight out of the corner of his eye. At the time, he hardly registered them being there because they’d felt as constant as the building itself. “Why?” 

Felix stops pacing and looks at him like he’s stupid. “Why would I guard you?”

Maybe he is. “Yes.”

“Because you were a beast who’d finally shown your true face. Because you’re my king.” Felix’s eyes widen and Dimitri gets the distinct feeling he didn’t mean to say those last few words. It’s the first time he can remember hearing Felix say ‘my king’ and it brings up a mixture of emotions in him that he can’t quite name. Whatever they brought up in Felix is making him look like he wants to run. 

He has to say something. “Thank you.”

It’s not the right thing though because it brings the normal Felix back. He’s not sure that’s something he wanted. “I don’t want your thanks.” 

This doesn’t make sense. Nothing about anything Felix is saying makes sense or if it does make sense, Dimitri can’t fathom it. He used to understand Felix back when they were children and could barely stand to be apart but things haven’t been the same in years. It is partially his fault but that doesn’t stop him from yearning to reach that level again even though he knows it’ll never happen. “Then what is it you want?” 

To his surprise, Felix actually takes a moment to consider his answer. “I want you to be a king who does something that makes you worthy of everyone who’s ever died for you.”

Ah. Finally, something that makes sense. “I swear to you that I will stop Edelgard, no mat--”

“Shut up!”

Dimitri blinks. “I--”

“I said, shut up!” Felix says. “Don’t talk to me like one of your ghosts. I’m real. All of this is real. The dead don’t need you. The living do.” 

The living. What does Dimitri know about them? He’s only just barely dragged himself back to a point where he feels he can count himself amongst their number again. And right now, he feels like all the energy has been sapped from his limbs and like the weight of his armor might crush him if he lets it. He leans against one of the desks, grateful for how tangible the hard wood is beneath his hand as he grasps the edge. He understands now: Felix’s concern is for Dimitri the king, not Dimitri the person. “I do not know if I can be what you expect of me, Felix.”

There’s that snort of disdain again. “What I expect of you?” There’s always so much anger in Felix’s golden eyes and he holds nothing back now. “What I expect of you is to try not to die in this war and to accept that I will be there to make sure of it.”

His choice of words isn’t lost on Dimitri. Accept. It implies that he can also reject Felix’s declaration but somehow, he’s increasingly feeling like it isn’t an option at all. They will march into battle in Enbarr together just like they’d always talked about as children except as children, they’d always pictured themselves more like Kyphon and Loog instead of… whatever they are now. He can say none of this though and Felix is still looking at him as if he expects an answer so Dimitri says, “Very well. You’ll be with me during the battle. Your sword is always welcome.”

“Good,” Felix says, half turning as if to go. “Glad that’s settled.”

Later, Dimitri won’t recall making any conscious decision to softly say what he says next. “I just wish I knew how to earn your affection again.”

“My what?” He stops, expression a strange one. 

For some goddess forsaken reason, Dimitri keeps talking. “We were friends once. More than that, really. The way I cared about you and you cared about me was…” Felix’s expression looks more and more strangled and so Dimitri trails off. 

“You absolute idiot,” Felix says and then closes the distance between them so he can yank Dimitri’s head down into a kiss. There’s nothing tentative nor soft about it as Felix takes what he wants and Dimitri is too shocked to kiss him back. But then both his mind and his body catch up and he finds himself responding in kind. It’s not the first time they’ve kissed; their teenage years were filled with stolen moments here and there before everything had changed and then during a charged moment in the training yard after. But something about this feels different. Like it’s more. And for the first time in a long time, Dimitri truly wants to live.

And so he pulls Felix close to him, tight enough so he can feel his heart beating alongside his own. Felix’s fingers weave through his blond hair and then pull at it and Dimitri can’t stop the sound he makes. His hands move from Felix’s back to his waist and then trail down his muscular thighs and for a moment, Dimitri considers hoisting the smaller man in the air so his legs might wrap around his waist but it might ruin everything if Felix hates it so he settles for spinning them around and backing Felix into the nearest wall. This is good. This is better. He can feel Felix everywhere against his own body and it’s everything.

There’s nothing refined about the way they kiss nor anything soft or gentle but it feels right given the more recent history between them. How could Dimitri have ever thought that Felix didn’t care? If anything, he now understands that Felix perhaps cares too much even if he’d rather die than show it. That’s also how Dimitri knows they’ll likely never speak of this again. There’s a chance, of course, but he doubts it. So he will take this moment and savor it and kiss Felix like it might be the last time. 

It’s with obvious reluctance on both sides that their lips eventually part again but they don’t pull away from each other yet. Dimitri moves just enough so that he’s not pressing Felix against the wall with his entire body. It’s just enough of an opening for Felix to manage to spin them around and force his back against the wall now. One of his hands reaches out and grabs at Dimitri’s hair on his good side. For a moment, he thinks Felix is going to kiss him again but instead, he says, “I will die by your side, Dimitri, or I will live by it. There is no other option.”

“I understand,” Dimitri says and then nothing further. For now, there is nothing left to say. More words might ruin this. Whatever this is. 

Felix doesn’t give him much time to reconsider the thing. Instead, he releases his grip roughly, making Dimitri’s head knock backwards against the wall as he pushes away and walks out of the room without another glance.

But when they march on Enbarr days later, Felix is at Dimitri’s side, sword sharp and at the ready for whatever the Emperor might throw at them. 

There was no other option. 


End file.
